Birds lovers take on towering task for chimney swifts

To help chimney swifts survive, Kane County bird lovers have built four towers to help provide habitat for the birds.

Joan Cary, Special to the Tribune

Birds lovers take on towering task for chimney swifts

Sometimes on summer evenings, Marion Miller likes to sit in her lawn chair and enjoy the air show happening overhead.

With soft and rapid twittering, small smudge-gray birds known as chimney swifts gather at sunset and with amazing precision whip in circles through the air catching insects. Then suddenly, as if someone blew a whistle, they funnel one by one into a chimney or hollow tree to rest for the night.

Miller and her husband, Rich Miller, of Batavia, love to watch these small "winged cigars," as they are often called, and marvel at their aerial display.

But they also worry about them.

Chimney swift numbers have dropped about 80 percent in Illinois — and more than 50 percent nationally — since the 1960s, according to bird experts. Scientists primarily blame a loss of habitat, namely a lack of those hollow trees and chimneys.

You read about these birds and you realize how marvelous they are— Marion Miller

That's why the Millers coordinated a recent project with the Kane County Audubon Society to erect four false chimneys or chimney swift towers — 12-foot-tall towers with 14-inch square interiors — where they hope the many swifts will nest and roost.

"If you build it, they will come. Right?" Marion Miller said last month.

Her words proved prophetic, though faster than she expected. Late last week, the Millers discovered a pair of chimney swifts with their young already nesting in one of the towers, a surprising development considering it can take up to four years for the birds to occupy such structures. The earliest they thought the birds might settle in the towers was next spring.

"Celebrate Great News!" Marion Miller wrote in an email to her birding friends after the discovery.

Although chimney swifts are on environmental watch lists, they are not listed as endangered. But Rich Miller says their habitat is.

"That's what's endangered, the chimneys where they roost," he said, watching one evening from a Geneva parking lot as more than 100 birds descended into the chimney of the old Cetron building at 7 Richards St. Developers recently proposed taking down the old electronics factory to build apartments, shops and restaurants.

The Millers and others hope their towers will provide a solution to that problem.

The towers were constructed by the Veterans Conservation Corps of Chicagoland, a group of military veterans. They are located at the LeRoy Oakes Forest Preserve in St. Charles, the Hickory Knolls Discovery Center in St. Charles, the Jelke Creek Bird Sanctuary in Sleepy Hollow and the Brunner Family Forest Preserve in West Dundee. For safety reasons, the Millers would not disclose which tower was recently occupied by the nesting swifts.

"You read about these birds and you realize how marvelous they are," Marion Miller said. "And then you watch them and you just fall in love with them."

Chimney swifts migrate each spring from South America to as far north as Canada. They live primarily in the eastern half of the U.S.

Born with tiny feet or claws that do not allow them to perch, but only to cling to vertical surfaces, they spend most of their life airborne — eating one-third of their weight in flying insects each day, even bathing and gathering sticks for their nests on the wing. They rest together at night, clinging vertically to the insides of hollow trees, chimneys and silos.

Their fragile, saucer-shaped nests are composed of twigs held together by the bird's gluelike saliva. That same saliva cements the nest to the rough surface of brick and tree bark as well as the rough interior of chimney swift towers.

Scientists say only one pair will nest in a chimney while many other nonbreeding swifts roost above it for the night. Those nestlings will return to that location the next year if it's still available.

Finding a spot to overnight is getting more and more difficult for them because of logging, development and fewer masonry chimneys. More people also choose to cap chimneys to keep wildlife out.

The North American Breeding Bird Survey showed chimney swifts declined about 3.7 percent per year from 1966 to 2012 in Illinois, according to avian ecologist Jeff Hoover at the Illinois Natural History Survey in Champaign.

"That's a pretty substantial decline," Hoover said. "These chimney swift towers seem to fit the bill for what they need and what they are missing. It might take awhile for the birds to find them, but once they do, they are smart about coming back to where they have been successful."

Grace Storch, an active member of the Jo Daviess Conservation Foundation, has witnessed chimney swift success on her land in northwest Illinois. When she built her house near Elizabeth 12 years ago, she had the architect include plans for a false chimney at the end of her garage, just for the birds.

"The architect thought I was crazy, and the contractor probably did too," she said.

But before her house was finished, the birds began to move in to theirs. A few years after, she added another false chimney to a shed. Again, swifts moved in.

"I grew up with them. They have always been one of my favorites," Storch said. "My recommendation would be for people to not cap the chimney. Close the damper and let the birds roost and nest, and then clean it out in the fall. Birds need all the nesting sites they can get. All of the birds need a lot of help."

The Millers, along with Ben Haberthur, of Geneva, a restoration ecologist who heads the veterans group, hope more swifts find the new Kane County structures next spring. Marion Miller said it is unlikely there will be more nesting this year as fall migration approaches.

Haberthur and three other veterans built the towers so that each stands on steel stilts about 2 feet high and is embedded into a square concrete foundation. The tower floor allows for ventilation and cleaning, and a "sun collar" at the top keeps the box from overheating and helps prevent heavy rain from damaging the nest.

Marion Miller says their 10 volunteer chimney swift monitors will watch for activity at the towers and also make sure vegetation doesn't create a highway for ants that prey on the nestlings.

"The babies are only the size of a jelly bean when they are born. That's another thing I love about them," she said.

They used plans from one of two books about chimney swifts written by Paul and Georgean Kyle, chimney swift enthusiasts outside Austin, Texas, who have 18 towers on their 10-acre bird sanctuary.

The Kyles said they don't have a firm count on towers around the country but believe it is "at least in the high hundreds." There are more than 100 just in central Texas, they said.

Of the 80-plus they have built, 80 percent, they said, were occupied the first year if the tower was completed by mid-March, when the swifts returned in migration. But success is not guaranteed.

At Cantigny Park in Wheaton, chimney swifts are seen flying overhead, but disappointingly, none has taken to roosting in the tower the park built in 2012, said Jeff Reiter, senior manager of communications. He is hopeful for next year.

The Millers hope that someday they can have a video camera installed inside one of the new towers so visitors at the educational centers can observe bird activity inside.

"It's not just about protecting birds," she said. "It's about educating people."